Apple co-founder says rivals are biting

Steve Wozniak: “It’s such an important event for mankind and for history every time Apple introduces one of these new products I want to be there. I want to be a part of it. It’s almost as if you’re following the Grateful Dead or something.”
Photo: Glenn Hunt

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak admits the pressure is on the world’s largest company to keep delivering revolutionary new products or customers will vote with their feet.

As hundreds of Apple devotees lined up around Australia to get the latest version of the iPhone, Mr Wozniak said he was confident the technology giant would remain market leader despite the death last year of close friend and Apple founder
Steve Jobs
.

“Right now we’re in a mode where every new product that’s good will sell hugely and keep the company growing and going forward, like the iPhone 5," Mr Wozniak told the Weekend Financial Review after a speech to business leaders in Brisbane.

But Mr Wozniak, who is still a shareholder of Apple despite leaving the company in 1987, said there was an expectation on Apple, which has a market capitalisation of $US654 billion, to come up with the next iPad or iPhone, another game-changing product. “The culture of the company is this is what we do. Nobody in the company and none of the customers want Apple to be less than innovative," Mr Wozniak said.

“If products start coming out that don’t meet those goals of being very revolutionary and super-changing, if it’s too much of the same thing, after a while our buying customers will revolt.

“They will vote with their feet. That keeps us on the track because we have to satisfy them."

Although no longer directly involved with product development, Mr Wozniak, who is now a prominent philanthropist, said Apple’s new chief executive, Tim Cook, is continuing Mr Jobs’ legacy.

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“He only sleeps three hours a night and is inspired by Steve Jobs," he said.

“But for something very different you’ve never thought of, there are only certain categories of life that are left – television sets, cameras and watches – and when Apple jumps in it’s going to be so different to what everyone else has done."

Mr Wozniak developed the world’s first personal computer in the mid-1970s with Apple I and Apple II. While he was the creative genius behind the early Apple products, Mr Jobs was the ultimate salesman.

“I never set out to make any money. I just wanted to be friendly and liked by everyone. I would develop product, after product, after product and Steve would find ways to turn it into dollars," he said.

“If I had just made products I would have just given them away. Steve Jobs wanted to change the world, to be a Shakespeare or Newton."

Speaking at the QUT Business Leader’s Forum, Mr Wozniak, brandishing his new iPhone 5 said:

“It’s such an important event for mankind and for history every time Apple introduces one of these new products I want to be there."

I want to be a part of it. It’s almost as if you’re following the Grateful Dead or something," he said.

“But I got it [the iPhone5] 17 hours before the people in California so I beat the Americans."

Mr Wozniak earlier told the audience about his fascination with transistor radios as a kid, which launched him into a career at Hewlett Packard and then at Apple where with Jobs they created the market for home computers.

Mr Wozniak said the ongoing appeal of Apple products was the design.

“How you represent your products is so important. That’s what the attraction of the Apple products is," he said.

The Apple co-founder said the next generation of products would focus more on “artificial intelligence".

So rather than asking Suri on your iPhone for directions to a restaurant, you’ll be able to ask the next generation of products to “tell me where to have a good time".